


Stormfront

by NevillesGran



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Mind Control, POV Second Person, horrible childhood is even worse in alternate timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 18:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5015665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“[The Mongfishes] were <b>very gifted</b>—especially when it came to biology. Well, they just <b>made sure</b> there was an appropriate heir.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>So what about the AU where Lucrezia decided, way back when, that seduction and lying were fun but she'd really rather her next husband be more…tractable? (And what good is a puppet king if he won't do what he's <em>told?</em>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stormfront

You are one year old (you won’t remember this) and you are crying because you are scared of the giant white spiders that the ghost women ride. You really shouldn’t be down here seeing them, but your mother took your sister to make social visits today, and, after the last too-close assassination attempt, she asked your father to keep a personal eye on you while she was gone. He cares too, in his own way, so when he went down to the tunnels to speak to the ghost women about their Lady’s war, he brought you and the nurse in whose arms you are screaming. She won’t say anything. She _can’t_. (She will most likely be killed anyway.)

You don’t know any of this, because you are a just barely a year old. You think the spider looming overhead on legs like too-long bones is going to eat you, and you are screaming and crying because nobody else seems to be concerned about this. Your nurse is doing her best to shush you while your father the Prince has his secret conversation with the chief of the ghost-spider priestesses.

The high priestess has had a very long day, commanding mindless foot soldiers and sneaking hive engines into place for future recruitment drives. So perhaps she can be forgiven for breaking off her conversation with the Prince to snap at your nurse in heavily accented Romanian, “ _Silence_ _him!_ ”

The white stone on her circlet glows slightly, lending a crackling echo to her voice. Your nurse slaps a hand over your mouth, but it’s too late: you’ve already fallen silent.

-

You are four years old and you and your sister have snuck into the chapel your father has started constructing on the reverse sides of the library walls. This adventure was Anevka’s idea, but you weren’t shy about following—you want to know what they’re _building_ in here. So the two of you “borrowed” a spare stealth cloak from one of the Smoke Knights and crept in, clinging together beneath the obscuring fabric.

Now that you can see the Device, however, you still don’t actually know what it does. It’s more like a throne than an altar, with a big…thing on top. Lots of wires sticking out everywhere. It doesn’t look complete at all. Even the surrounding chapel is disappointing, the paintings unfinished and most of the statue niches still empty.

“Zoy!” cries a voice, and suddenly the cloak is pulled out of your and Anevka’s hands. A Geisterdamen warrior stands there, machine parts in one hand and your stealth cloak in the other. She looks cross.

“ _Go!_ ” she orders, pointing sternly at the door. It’s light enough in the chapel that you can barely see her moonstone glow, but her voice echoes in your mind and even as she continues scolding in the Geistertongue, your legs are taking you obediently out of the room.

You can stop walking in the corridor, so you wait there patiently until Anevka comes out a couple minutes later. She spots you immediately and strides over, scowling and holding the stealth cloak bundled under one arm.

“Why are you always such a scaredy-cat?” she demands. “It’s not like we’re going to get in trouble.”

“She said go,” you explain.

It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation—almost everyone _else_ in the Castle and town has to do what the Geisterdamen say, when they use their Goddess voices. It’s just Anevka and Father and Mother and a couple other sufficiently high Order members who don’t. You’re high too, heir (in secret) to the Lightning Throne, but the Lady Vrin says you’re meant to serve the Eternal Lady when she returns. So that’s that.

Anevka groans. “You are going to be such a stupid king.” She grabs your arm and starts pulling you down the hall. “It’s a good thing you’ve got me around to be an advisor.”

You’d _really_ like to correct her, protest that you only have to do what the Geisterdamen say, not anyone else. But when Lady Vrin told you about your Destiny with the Lady, she also ordered you not to tell anyone else. So your throat closes on the argument.

But you pull your arm back from Anevka and march stubbornly at her side, moving in double-time to keep up with her long nine-year-old legs. “I am too gonna to be a good king. Just watch!”

-

You are eight years old, lying propped up on your elbows on a wide steel girder in the ceiling of a half-built mess hall on Castle Wulfenbach. The electric lights shining through the cracks in the floor above your head are a little bit like stars, and a candle stuck to the girder a foot from your nose lends the ambiance of a campfire. Across the flame is your best (only, first _real_ ) friend, sitting up properly and telling a very animated ghost story. This faux camping trip wasn’t exactly planned—you wouldn’t even be out tonight if someone hadn’t booby-trapped Gil’s bed _again_ —but it’s pretty fun now that you are. It generally is, somehow, with Gil.

“—he turned around, and there was the ghost!” says Gil, slashing his hands dramatically through the air. He always does that when he gets going, like he can’t stay still for a moment, even when by rights you should both be fast asleep. You think he saves all the energy up during the day, when he’s quiet and grumpy around the other students.

“It was a woman all in white,” Gil continues, “with white skin and white hair and blank white eyes. Except the cloth in her hands, the baby blanket, which was stained…” He lowers his voice dramatically: “…with bright red blood!”

You sit up, and not because of the blood, nor the way the candlelight was flickering across Gil’s face. That’s only spooky if you pretend _really_ hard. But the ghost…

“Where did you hear that story?” you demand, a little too sharply. It wasn’t from _you_. You’re not allowed to tell anyone about the Geisterdamen. _Not_ _able_ not allowed. Nor about the Lady Lucrezia, the hive engines, or anything else the Order does. Lady Vrin was very clear about it before you left to be the Baron’s hostage.

Gil just shrugs. “It’s just around. Clara was telling Stepania about something she heard one of the airmen saying, after a tour in the Wastelands.”

“Oh. Okay.” You settle back a little.

Gil’s smart. “Why do you care?”

You try to mirror his careless shrug. “I don’t really. I just…hadn’t heard it before.”

He doesn’t look convinced, which is fair: you don’t think you sounded very convincing. But you didn’t do anything _wrong_. If you’d been going to, you would have stopped. Even if you’d _wanted_ to tell. Though actually, you aren’t really sure you care that much about keeping the Geisterdamen secret, or their Goddess. Lady Vrin has never explained to your satisfaction how “serving the Eternal Lady” is supposed to mesh with your other destiny, “being Storm King,” and you’re pretty sure you prefer the one with Muses and nobody telling you what to do.

You add somewhat hesitantly, “I’m not sure I like the ghost though.”

Gil starts to smirk and you rush to say, before your voice stops, “I’m not _scared_. I think it would be a better story if the ghost was even creepier. If it had made the _guy_ kill the family, by possessing him or telling him what to do or something.”

Gil’s eyes go satisfactorily round, but he shakes his head. “That’s not part of any of the reports.”

“Well it should be,” you say decisively, and you’re delighted to find that you _can_.

You guess it’s because Gil thinks it’s only a story.

Gil starts to respond, but loses it in a massive yawn. Gil’s proud, even though he doesn’t have anything like a family name. When people trap his bed, he’ll stay up all night just to prove that he doesn’t care, even though he really feels bad and he’ll feel even worse the next day.

But he’s also ridiculously easy to guilt, so, Geisterdamen aside, that’s your cue to yawn back and say, “I’m sleepy. Maybe we should go back. You can stay in my room.”

Gil shoots you a look that says he knows exactly what you’re doing. It’s not the first time this has happened. But neither your yawn nor his was fake, and you’re already getting to your feet.

You pull the candle off the girder (it leaves a wax stain) and pass it to him. “To keep you safe from the ghost woman,” you pretend to tease.

“I’m not the one who’s scared of her,” he retorts. But he accepts the candle and starts the scramble up to the ducts that will lead you back to the school.

You follow, wishing silently that a candle was really all it took. You meant to say “wom _en_ ”, not “wom _an_.” You guess using the plural would break the idea that you’re just talking about a ghost story.

Well, you’re safe on Castle Wulfenbach, both you and Gil. And the Baron isn’t exactly known for sending his hostages _home_.

-

You are still eight years old but everything has changed. At least, everything _good_. But you don’t care, not right now, not when the universe is so much _more_ than a cold Castle and knives in the dark and even Gil’s face when he sold you out the Baron. You see can still see it now, but you see _everything_ now. Anevka was trying to boss you around again so you yelled at her and stormed off to distract yourself with a new book about the Storm King, a novelization of the opera that you got last week and have only read a couple times yet, but you kept _seething_ , until it felt like your skin was jumping with angry sparks, and then one of the illustrations struck you _just so_ and it occurred to you that _you_ could make that, yes, you could tell _exactly_ how the joints were supposed to line up, how the planes of her skin _fit together_ , how to make the light in her eyes into something **_real_**. For one brief, blinding moment, you could see how _everything_ worked, not just the _Muse_ but the **_universe_ ;** _every_ _gear_ and _star_ and _person **in their place** , __playing their part_ in the **_greatest story ever told,_** and all _you_ have to do is _set the effects, take center-stage,_ _and_ ** _direct_** ** _._**

You’ve been in the lab ever since—some lab, the nearest lab. You think you ran? You are _trapped_ in this _miserable_ castle in this _poisonous_ town, where _everybody_ bosses you around and _nobody_ likes you— _not,_ apparently, that anyone likes you _anywhere else either_. **_So what_. ** Maybe kings don’t _need_ friends. But you’re going to have Muses if you have to _make them from scratch_ ; it is your _right_ and your _job_ and you _can;_ the entire _world_ will _bow at your feet_ if you can _just_ — _connect_ —these **_blasted_** _aetheric couplings_ —

What you _really_ need is one of the fibrillating dipsychosynthesizers you watched your father attach to the Lady’s machine yesterday. _Yes_. It doesn’t take long to run across the Castle, barge past the guard at the chapel door (there’s always a guard), and clamber onto the back of the chair, and from there, if you stand on tiptoes, you can reach the dipsychosynthesizers _and_ , _oooh_ , _hypertolic screws_ ; if you use those in the casing you’ll _completely_ _negate_ the need for a flexographic converter! Good thing you brought your _multi-use screwdriver!_ You scramble down, parts in hand. Now all you need to do is _derive the thinking mechanisms, invent a better thermoregulator, overhaul Gorschplott’s gear system theory_ …

“What have you done to the Lady’s machine?” demands a furious Geister voice. “ _Stop_. _Return those at once!_ ”

“ _Not **now** , Vrin!_” you almost sing, mind alight. You dodge around her grasp. “ _I’m_ **_busy!_** ”

The door-guard is bobbing anxiously at her heels—he must’ve summoned her. Ugh, _minions!_ But he’s just _pathetically_ easy to avoid, and with Smoke training and sparkling energy rushing through your veins—you wonder if you could bioluminesce?—you _easily_ beat them both back to your lab, then lock the door because apparently you _have_ to. _Finally, privacy to work!_

Though it _wouldn’t hurt_ to install a couple _extra traps_ , just to be _sure_. You could repurpose the _vacuum_ , hook it up to the radiation stabilizer and _reverse the intake-output ports_ to _weaponize_ the flow…

Approximately four days later, two of working and one of sleeping and one of—something in between; honestly, you don’t remember it all—you haven’t made your own Muse. You can admit that was a _particular_ burst of hubris, and anyway what you really want is the _original nine, reunited_ _and_ _whole_. But you did, in an effort to develop a proper thermoregulator, rewire and re-pipe the entire Sturmhalten Castle heating system and electric grid. With _gold plating!_ Still nobody here likes you, but at least it’s _well-lit_ and _sort of warm_ throughout the castle (except where you left shadows for reasons of _aesthetics_ , of course.) (You may have also redecorated a few rooms. They’re _much_ improved.) So your breakthrough wasn’t a _complete_ waste of time.

In fact, you suspect it wasn’t a waste of time _at all_. Well _obviously_ it wasn’t; having the Spark is part of your _heritage,_ and breaking through at such a young age is a _very good sign_ for its strength. But you still have a couple tests to run.

There are no doors in the deep-down, so you knock on the rock of the cave wall because that’s Good Etiquette. Lady Vrin looks up sharply from her meditation.

“What are you doing here?” she demands.

You duck your head in something between shame and a formal bow. “I wanted to apologize for my behavior the other day,” you say clearly. You hold out a bag of parts. “I brought back the pieces I took. I wouldn’t have done it, only I was in breakthrough…”

You trail off guiltily, because to explain further would be condescending.

Vrin narrows her eyes skeptically. “ _Bring them here_ ,” she orders, hand out and moonstone circlet glowing in the sickly cavern light.

You’re already filling your mind with Muses, gears and art and prophecies, until you know if you spoke there would be Spark in your voice. You can still hear the Goddess’s echoes in Vrin’s command, but they don’t have room to bounce around your head the same way.

Yet you walk forward and obediently hand her the bag, because you are only eight years old but you _are_ a Sturmvoraus, and you know how the game is played. And you’re a _spark_ now, so it’s about _time_ you stopped being one of the pieces.

-

You are just barely thirteen years old and you have a secret.

You have a lot of secrets. Many of them you inherited—a title, an Order, a conspiracy or three. Lucrezia’s chapel in the Castle library and Geisterdamen and hive engines in the caverns below your town. And there’s the trick the Lady Lucrezia left in your endocrine system that makes you effectively wasped (you’re _fairly certain_ that’s where the problem is, though you haven’t figured out how to decode the chemicals… _yet_.) Only the Geisterdamen know about that (you’re almost entirely certain), but _they_ don’t know that you can ignore their petty commands so long as you’re in a spark fugue, and _nobody_ knows how well you’re training yourself to control those. You live and _breathe_ secrets.

(You still wake up in a cold sweat sometimes, at dreams of statues and portraits come to life with blood on their hands, of wasp-headed women who whisper to keep still as they devour you, and your mind tears itself to shreds but you can’t move…. The nightmares are a secret too.)

But you’ve never had a secret like _this_ , that has nothing to do with your family, that you didn’t make or inherit but _found out yourself_ —through frankly _exhaustive_ research. In the end you had to sneak away from your own birthday party, which wasn’t easy, to look through Cousin Ludvig’s comprehensive genealogy charts of every significant Europan spark in the last three centuries. And no few of the insignificant ones. You could have asked—he _loves_ showing them off—but then he would have known you were looking. And at whom. This is _your_ secret.

Yours and Baron Wulfenbach’s. Now _there’s_ an odd thought.

Home again after the party, you fling yourself back on your bed, letting your arm fall over your face. Teufel’s son! Of _course!_ It’s so _obvious_. How didn’t you see it _before?_

Because Wulfenbach hid it, of course, and hid it well—it’s taken you _years_ to track down Gil’s real history. Even Ludvig’s charts mark the infant as deceased, and he pays more mind to the accuracy of his charts than to the upkeep of his tower, not to mention his staff, Order duties, and sometimes hygiene.

He’s wrong _now_ though, because you know for a _fact_ that the report he cited for that “* _Deceased”_ is a second draft, missing two key words from the ship’s manifest: the safety pod with attached white noise maker was “airtight” and the “one infant, (male) (presumed innocent)” was _“ **alive** ”_, _not_ “corpse.” You have the half-burnt original document in a locked box inside the frame of your armoire. There hadn’t been any more information on who the child _belonged_ to, but you have no reason to doubt the _rest_ of Ludvig’s records—he kept the transcripts of his interview with Teufel’s elderly aunt. _She_ never said the boy died.

You roll onto your stomach and bore a hole in the headboard with your gaze. You can’t even much blame Wulfenbach for keeping this secret, not _Teufel’s son,_ No _wonder_ Gil was so smart. He’ll be an _incredible_ spark some day—and half of Europa would want him _dead_ if they knew! And the other half, Wulfenbach included no doubt, would want to _use_ him. You wonder if a rescue…no. You thought you were friends, he betrayed you, and now your last nagging curiosity about him is laid to rest. Gil is out of your reach, and no longer your problem anyway.

But you’re going to keep _this_ secret from your family as well.

-

You are sixteen years old and you live in a palace. It’s beautiful, every room full of priceless artwork, and the farther in you go, the more marvels you have (the more you understand, the faster you think, the less anything outside _matters_ but your **_work_**.) You also keep things you want to remember—might as well use that old trick, while you’re at it. But the real wonder is the windows, clear and colored alike, thick soundproof glass from which you can observe the world without the pressure of nagging fears and echo-edged commands.

Of course you live in a literal palace as well; that’s fine enough. But it’s your mental Palace of Enlightenment that you truly treasure. The conceptualization helps you control your spark, which is critical when being _too sane_ means the Geisterdamen can command you and being _too mad_ means you forget to feign forced obedience. They don’t order you about nearly as often as you keep yourself in a light fugue, but you don’t trust them not to _start_ at any time. It’s only paranoia if you’re _wrong_.

There are other advantages as well. There’s some wear on your body, sure, and sometimes you can’t sleep—but your _thoughts_ are _faster_ , your _reflexes better_ …you don’t know why more sparks _don’t_ live permanently on the edge of the madness place. You suppose they can’t control it, and their sparks aren’t _strong_ enough to keep it up. You were just born _better!_

And almost by _accident_ you’ve developed a reputation for absent-mindedness, impetuosity, and political indelicacy. Oh, you had to cultivate it a little, but people are astonishingly _stupid_ about the assumptions they make when they hear a tinge of sparks harmonics in your voice, or see you doodling clock mechanisms instead (they _think_ ) of paying attention to a poisons lecture. It’s almost _too_ easy. You stumble in training and perfect your stealth in secret, and your sister and cousins are so caught up in trying to be the “best” that it doesn’t occur to them that **_you_** _already_ _are_.

And it’s so very _advantageous_ to be underestimated.

“Father!” you call down from where you are kneeling on scaffolding around Lucrezia’s summoning beacon, modifying the psychosomatic nets. “Are you _certain_ the chemical balance should be so heavily in favor of _phosphorous?_ Surely the adions will counteract the energy differential _without_ it. Then the next girl might not be so _fried_.”

“ _Yes_ I’m _certain_ ,” he snaps. He’s working on wiring in the chair itself, rearranging a node matrix from six-by-six to four-by-nine. He holds out a hand over one shoulder—“ _Pliers!_ ”—and accepts the requisite tool without glancing at the Geisterdamen warrior who hands it to him.

She scowls. They don’t like playing minion to anyone but their Eternal Lady. But they won’t let anyone but themselves, you, or Father work on the summoning engine, him because he’s their best ally and you because they think they have you leashed. (“ _Do not sabotage the machine_.” “ _Make it work_.” “ _Bring our Lady home_.”) So they’re stuck with lab assistant duties.

(You must admit: from a technical perspective, the summoning engine is a _fascinating_ puzzle, and sometimes it’s all you can do not to give it your all for the sheer **_thrill of_** _**invention**_. It _bothers_ you to have such an intriguing machine _nonfunctional_ in _your_ castle. But Lucrezia’s return would be **_calamitous_** , not just for Europa but for every _plan_ and _shred of carefully hoarded independence_ you have, so you forbear from telling your father that that matrix should _actually_ be a five-by-seven.)

“But if we raise the percentage of _potassium_ instead, we could simulate _electrosynaptic movement_ ,” you argue, “and _ease_ the Mistress from the phytodynamic to the corporeal state.”

He actually looks up at that. “ _Hmm_ …”

You’re nowhere _near_ the outer rooms of your Palace. “Then we send a _preliminary_ charge down to stimulate the subject’s brain to _receptivity_. The wasps must preform a _similar_ neural stimulation, don’t they? It makes _sense_ that Lady Lucrezia would want the _same technique_ _here_ , considering its _obvious efficacy_.”

“Yes, **_yes,_** ” says your father. “Not _right_ , but _not_ a _bad idea_ , Tarvek. **_You!_** ” He turns suddenly to the Geister at his heel. “Go fetch me the notes on _wasps_ in the third floor laboratory. The one _behind_ the Red Drawing Room.”

She glances at her superior, who is standing guard by the door with a third Geister guard. A fourth waits, bored, by your toolbox on the floor.

The commanding priestess nods her approval for the errand, and orders your attendant over to help your father while she’s gone. You don’t care—you have all the tools you need to adjust the chemical levels here on your belt, and those notes are what you _really_ want, so you can learn _exactly_ what amended pangenes to counter in yourself. But mental Palace or not, you’ve come close enough to slipping up in past fugues that the Geisterdamen refuse to let you study the wasps yourself, though of _course_ they’ve long-since ordered you not to attempt to “change your fate with the Eternal Lady.” But they still listen to your _father_ , especially where the summoning engine is concerned. And Vrin isn’t here today to be _particularly_ suspicious.

It’s a race to completion, the summoning engine versus curing yourself of Lucrezia’s curse. You know which _you_ intend to finish first.

-

You are eighteen years old and you are in Paris. In a way, that is all that needs to be said. But here is some expansion: you are old enough to be recognized as an adult, a player in the game in your own right, and young enough (and royal enough, spark enough) that the future is open wide before you, the possibilities functionally _infinite_. And you are in Paris, the City of Light, Art, Love…everything that Sturmhalten _isn’t_. You haven’t solved Lucrezia’s trick yet, but you are attending one of the foremost research universities in the world, and there are no Geisterdamen looking over your shoulder _here_. For the first time in ten years you are back in the center of the world, and you are _free_.

Appropriately, Gilgamesh “Holzfaller” is at L’Institute d’Extraordinare as well. But…the less said about that the better. Really. _Really_. Some friendships are apparently just not meant to be.

_Paris!_

-

You are nineteen years old, your sister is dying, and you are sitting in a theater because you don’t know how to save her. Below the royal box is an audience and onstage a show, but honestly you aren’t certain what. You wandered in here more out of an exhausted lack of anything else you can do than from any desire to watch a—Heterodyne play, you realize, taking stock of the actors. Including a Lady Lucrezia of course, blonde and curvaceous and demanding. She’s a hero already in this one.

You’ve never much enjoyed Heterodyne plays.

Your mind wanders back to the lab and you run absently along the tracks you’ve been following for days. Weeks. Anevka is dying, and you’ve tried _everything_. You’ve restarted her heart, you’ve sewn wires into her nerves, you’ve all but _transplanted her brain_ into a new-built body. You’d attempt your mostly theoretical retrogenesis procedure, Geisterdamen suspicions be _damned_ , but you’re certain by this point that it wouldn’t make a difference: the fault is in the neural tissue itself; without constant chemical stimulation, she is heading rapidly and inevitably towards complete synaptic shutdown.

Maybe, you think bitterly and not for the first time, your father will finally give up then. Surely his own _daughter_ was _the_ last resort. It’s been sixteen years and they still haven’t found Lucrezia’s daughter; perhaps with Anevka’s death (your failure to save her), you can _finally_ convince him—subtly, carefully—to give up the “sacred trust.” You could watch a Heterodyne show without wincing internally at the buxom blondes.

Except you also need him _functional_ , for a few more years at least. And Anevka…is your sister. You know how much you can and can’t trust her. You used to play dress-up together.

You spin a spare gold button through your fingers, palming it and repalming it. If your life is a show, it must be an _opera_ , one of the _tragic_ ones. **_The Storm King_** , of course. If it were a Heterodyne show, something would miraculously happen right now to allow you to save Anevka, defeat the Other, and take your rightful throne. Ha, if only…

It’s almost chance that you’re watching the stage when the Muse dances on.

-

You are twenty years old and your favorite cousin is going to graduate from Smoke Knight training next month and be wasped. Except she is _not_ , not if you have anything to say about it. (If you _truly_ had anything to say about it, _none_ of the Smoke Knights would be wasped, nor the general populace. But here and now you are just going to save Violetta, who never wanted this job in the first place. She’s already been your unwitting accomplice for years; you think you might owe her a respite.)

You may not have any official say in the matter, but neither does Grandmother, and she “unofficially” _manages_ the Smoke Knight organization. (Grandfather generally can’t be bothered.) An amended report or two on her desk, another couple words in the ear of Veineaum who trains recruits—he owes you a favor—and a few other strings pulled here and there: hints dropped, trip wires set, and a coal delivery schedule amended, until oh my, it appears that Violetta is going to be sent to spy in Mechanicsburg _as soon_ _as_ she finishes her final test. Or perhaps even slightly _before_ the end, if she does poorly enough. Of course she’ll be on the record as having gone through the complete “graduation ceremony”: she did, after all, finish the course. Pity she had to catch that train—and to Mechanicsburg of all places, where nothing of interest happens these days. But Violetta is known to be… _sub-par_ in the Way of the Smoke; people titter and barely bother to act surprised that she’d been hustled off to somewhere she couldn’t embarrass the family. You, for your part, pretend to be relieved that she isn’t around to yell at you anymore.

You truly are. That’s (the) one person you can trust safe away from all this (still close enough if you _need_ her.) And you’re making plans for the rest…

-

You are twenty-one years old and you have just fallen to your knees in the royal booth of the Sturmhalten Theater, because the actress playing Lucrezia shouted “ ** _KNEEL!_** ” in a voice that blasted through you like lightning through water. If the Geisterdamen’s voices could echo, you feel—you _fear_ —that this one has taken up permanent residence. You cannot hide from it. Even in your mind the Palace of Enlightenment could never hold off a Heterodyne—she _must_ be, Lucrezia and Bill’s daughter. You’d need a mental _Sturmhalten_. But she’s _already here_ , when you’d started to even give up the fear of it (you should have worked harder at curing yourself, risked the experiment...) She's here in the city, almost in the castle (in the chapel), and your knees are smarting, your heart pounding, and the ten thousand windows of what you now realize were daydreams are shattered in one blow.

Your father hasn’t even noticed—you, that is. He’s too busy gaping at his machines. As if you need further confirmation that this is _Her_.

**Author's Note:**

> I really like the idea that all breakthroughs (and perhaps any particularly intense fugues) involve a moment of almost divine revelation like in Agatha Is Dreaming and I'm totally going to go work it into other fics now. The more I think about it, the more hilarious it is that Klaus must have set up the Teufel thing as basically a mystery for this suuuuper menacing pre-pubescent to solve. I may have come up with a detailed, scientifically semi-plausible explanation for wasps; I'll put it on tumblr soon.
> 
> Maybe I'll write at least a chapter two, or more, but probably switching to third person omniscient? I want to play in Agatha's head, too (and maybe even Lucrezia's; oooh….) But I'm not sure how much it'll diverge from canon so…*shrug*


End file.
